Any IP violations were pretty much Softimage-responsability and not their corporate masters du jure.
Hmm...how does that work, exactly? They were wholly owned by Microsoft, so doesn't that make them responsible for decisions made during this period of ownership?
Although Softimage had its own leadership within the company, they were owned by MS, so I don't get how they couldn't be found liable
Is a parent corpoeration responsable for every paperclip or internal policy at a subsidiary, even wholly owned? Is it reasonable to blame ITT or Textron or WR Grace or any other big corporation for everything a subsidiary (or a subsidiary of a subsidiary of a subsidiary etc.) does?
I'm not defending MS, and I don't know anything more about the Softimage IP issue the dinner party conversation, but in this case it sounds as if the problem was at Softimge and not higher.
You can make the argument that reponsability rests at the top be it ownership or chain of command or whatever but personally I tend to assign it to the folks who make the decisions. I'm told this was done in this case in Montreal not Redmond.
YMMV, and as I said this is just dinner party chit-chat to me.
Disclaimer: I walked by Softimage's offices a few minutes ago on my way for a pastry
MS's involvement in this was pretty minimal. They bought Softimage, there was no, shall we say "meeting of the minds" and they soon gave up and sold 'em off. Any IP violations were pretty much Softimage-responsability and not their corporate masters du jure.
Of course Softimage is notable for being, as far as I know, the only shop that was ever bought up by MS that then succesfully fought it's way free.
all those lame server on wwws1.com entries in my log files. [...] Funny, guys who can write these programs to monitor everything you do on the 'net, but can't setup DNS properly.
Whoah there quick-at-the-mouth. wwws1.com was the intended address, not www.s1.com. Their strategy worked exactly as intended by providing a reasuring-looking domain.
When the hell are they gonna release the source to Aqua? At least the parts that aren't licensed from other companies (like Adobe).
Aqua depends on the Quartz rendering layer (Display PDF)
Apple developed Quartz (Display PDF) in-house specifically in order to avoid paying licensing fees to Adobe like Next was for Display postscript
The PDF spec is open for anyone else to develop their own implementation, just like Apple did
Apple's implementation of Display PDF is apparently fairly MacOS X-specific and while chunks of it could likely be retargetted it's supposedly not a candidate for a direct port
Apple considers the Aqua GUI their trade dress and are quite vigorous about defending it
So, instead of whining at Apple to give away their goodies how about actually supporting the projects out there with the same aims? And instead of looking to rip-off their interface howzabout showing some initiative and coming up with a distinct sperate one - goodness knows there's enough folks happy to criticize the Aqua GUI.
When did Open Source become gimme gimme gimme?
On a related note this can lead to hazards
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Is Verizon Up to Speed?
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· Score: 3, Interesting
New Scientist Magazine is reporting that cellphones, particularly large numbers of them as would be found in a packed commuter train of busily networked folks, could be hazardous.
Passengers on packed trains could unwittingly be exposed to electromagnetic fields far higher than those recommended under international guidelines. The problem? Hordes of commuters all using their mobile phones at the same time.
...
Mmm - just what I want - to be stuck on BART with hordes of other techies all busily toasting each other's DNA.
Yet a much more important issue is the other direction - open and freely accessible groupware protocols implemented by a free-as-in-speech server solution, with Outlook connectivity provided by a Windoze plugin. For example, the Bill Workgroup Server takes this approach.
Is the MAPI Service Provider for Outlook (TM) also open source?
NO, all code that's written for Windows is closed source. You can get a 30 day test licence for free. After this trial period, you have to buy a licence at N&H or an authorized reseller.
The server portion may be open but the middleware portion is closed tight as a drum and that's what would make it it all usefull. Actually it all reads pretty disengenious to me, ballyhooing free & open but keeping the good part closed and pricey.
Check out The Physician's Computer Company
. They've been around 18 years, run on Red Hat (they handle it all for you), specialize in smallish offices like yours, having met some of the staff socially they're folks I'd like to do business with.
The real question is how much is your time & energy (meaning paid-for-by-your-employer) is worth vs the benefits of buying from a vendor?
You can get a reasonable deal from a Dell or IBM for 50 PCs. This includes putting your own image on the drive, support, a decent salesdroid who will likely help with any issues down the road, a sturdy warrenty to back your purchase up, lotsa help in the drivers & spares market, etc.
You can get 50 PCs assembled at ye local screwdriver shoppe for about what it would cost you to build-your-own but insofar as support & such you are own your own (unless it is some gross defect they can return to the manufacturer.)
Or you can do it all in house and assume you've got the time to do it all, keep up with everything, and of course document it all in case of a proverbial bus hitting you.
My own argument would be if the business is a real business it should invest in its tools that are a critical part of it's operation. If this eats into the other budgets tough - employees need a roof, lighting, and decent computers. Trying to nickel & dime on hardware is foolish because you invariably end up with a herd of increasingly quirky systems slowly becoming Frankensteined. Unless the tech support (you) is free they're going to end up spending any savings in your time as well as the downtime of the aging & rebuilt systems plus the increasingly irate rest of the staff.
Put this all on paper, generate some good estimates of costs & time allowences, failure rates & resolution times then present it to the CFO. Even for a company in a cash crunch these are generally compelling arguments that are well understood by the numbers folks.
They they don't bite then ask yourself if you want to hang around babysitting these monstrosities as the rest of the world moves on?
The Framingham GC is in a difficult location for public transit.
Reverse-commute on the Logan Express bus from the airport out to a short distance from the cinema. Indeed before the trees leaf out you can see the two buildings from each other; later just ask directions from the station staff, it's a trivial 5 minute walk. To catch Logan Express go to the lower level of the Airport and watch for a large red coach-style bus, the one you'll want is the hourly Framingham one.
Take the Commuter Rail out to Framingham station. There are buses that connect from there around Framingham but I've never seen a good map or schedule of them, Google or ask on ne.transportaion for current status. Personally I'd just catch a cab over.
Look into getting a ZipCar or just convincing a friend to drive you out. The cinema is a hop-skip-&-jump from the Framingham exit on the Mass Pike. Offering tickets & popcorn is good incentive.
Finally, contrary to some reports the digital projection isn't in the Premium Theater - that's standard 35mm insofar as I know. Instead I recall the large #9 screen is the one with the digital projection and special audio equipment. While the Premium screen does seem to get the freshest prints and often have the best focus & other projection niceties it appears to be just a well executed traditional film theater sans children & mystery stuff sticking to the seats & floors.
Apple just introduced their new iMac a few months ago. It's gotten great reviews everywhere from the New York Times to BusinessWeek to most every major local daily and geek publication.
Apple isn't going to confuse the market with an iMac that hearkens back to the older design iMac (which they still sell BTW!)
However the Education market is a big one for Apple and one they've recently been taking a beating in (in spite of a few big wins.) The last education-specific-product they had was the ill-starred eMate (Netwon-based indestructo-laptop) that burnt their customers when it was suddenly dropped.
Folks have been whining at Apple for a 17" iMac for forever. However Apple made it clear they couldn't do it in the iMac formfactor. Well, this is pretty close but yeah, not the same.
So here they've solved two problems with one stone, er, Mac. They've satisfied the Edu market with a cheapie low-maint iMac that has scaled up to the 17" world. They've also managed to satisfy that market without detracting from their can't-ship-them-fast-enough new iMac design.
Will this eMac move into the Consumer market? Probably not as such. Right now the service, support, marketing etc. for this model is nicely contained in the Edu division of Apple and likely to stay there for a while.
On the other hand businesses have really taken a shine to a iMac line. This is a bit of a quandary for Apple as they'd far prefer their G-series of Macs be the corporate model.
The eMac might lead the way to a compromise: Here's a cheapie iMac-alike that could be a great client packaged with a MacOS X Server. This could get Apple into the 1,000-cheap-standardized-ruggedized-identical-buil t-to-be-centrally-managed desktop model that they've been completely absent from.
However this would somewhat expand Apple's product line which is something they're leery of after the excesses of the late 80's-90's.
Right now Apple's product line-up is Consumer with iMac & iBook, Professional with G4 & PowerBook. The Cube was an odd duck to this - a cross between the iMac & G4. However this is almost exactly what the eMac is just cheaper and in a different formfactor.
So eMac = Cube v.2?
This is my guess. Not only did Apple listen to what Edus wanted from an iMac but they also learned what didn't work with the Cube. Now they've merged them and I wouldn't be surprised in a rev or two to see Apple start a big public push back onto corporate desktops.
Just as NT was perceived as a better OS as it came in desktop & server versions (gotta have the same across the enterprise!), it was "friendlier" then Netware and the other competition (can't get nicer then Apple!) and "industrial strength" (MacOS X runs BSD for goodness sakes!) I bet Apple is getting ready for the same assault back.
A range of hardware, expanding marketshare, an OS that runs the same stuff as "the big boys", easy to develop custom apps for, ease of use, runs MS Office; Apple could regain some serious ground.
This may be blaringly obvious to everyone else, but this seems like a good solution to the problems apple has been having getting its hands on LCD parts.
Apple uses a specific 15" LCD for their latest iMacs. The supply for these is constrained (in spite of Apple owning a big chunk of the manufacturer) and Apple is pretty much locked into these due to some design decisions.
The 17" LCD is not from the same production line and doesn't face any supply constraints. Indeed from word on the street these are pretty much "generic" 17" LCDs that can be bought from a number of manufacturers.
Either Apple has learned their lesson on single-source-components or more likely just didn't have the unusual requirements that led to their use in the latest iMacs.
Whatever the case it's clear ("blazingly obvious" in your parlance) that the two cases are not related. Nice try though; pity you didn't think it through first. "LCD parts" is useless as a category when describing different product lines.
I think I speak for most of us when I ask...
What the hell is "the Phantom Edit 1.1"?
We call this "The World Wide Web". The part of it you're on is "News for Nerds", most of whom are perfectly conversant with the subject under discussion. If you're not then might we guide you to the website referenced and suggest you take a look at the "links" it contains - they do contain explanations. Or if you're really desperate perhaps someone would acquaint you with these things called "search engines".
Or perhaps we should chew your food for you and wipe your ass too?
Don't bother to respond; someone as clueless or self-indulgent as you is very unlikely to have anything useful or interesting to contribute here.
This is not a troll, it is a perfectly reasonable response to a perfectly useless posting. "dangermouse" could have invested the ame effort into getting an answer as they did whining about not knowing and for somebody to puhlease spoonfeed them.
For those that never passed reading-for-comprehension the person states they're running an iMac rev. A.
This is the original iMac: Bondi Blue, 233 MHz, 2MB Rage+ video, mezzanine slot that was never used, really evil origami-style assembly.
To run MacOS X on this is, well, it's doable but it is painful. I bought MacOS X for my rev. B (same but with 6 MB video RAM) and finally scrubbed it off as too slow to be practical on this 4 year old hardware. Apparently you're a more patient person then I.
You're going to have to run the IDE cable off of the same bus the existing hard drive is on, chop a hole in the case to feed it out. Then you're going to have to find a compatible burner, trick it out it in a case of some sort (nekked electronics often come to bad ends) as well as that power supply. Now comes the problem of getting everything recognized...
My advice would be forget creating a Frankenstein-machine and move up to a machine that comes with it. Or go USB.
Apple is still selling the CRT iMacs at a good price. You can find older models for sale in lots of places online, particularly as kids who got them as they entered college graduate. With selling your existing model the cost of an iMac with native burning would almost certainly be less then cutting open your current one and hanging a lot of hardware off of it.
Or were you for some reason bound & determined not to replace your current iMac (all of your accessories match or something) then a USB burner would seem to be a good alternative. They're fairly well supported, if you get a USB 1.1/USB 2 one you'll be set for the future, a USB/FireWire and you'll be golden. Thus when you do break down and upgrade this'll be no huhu, indeed you can even lend it out to friends & family, share it between machines.
It's your call, but unless you're going for some bragging rights on iMac hardware hacking hanging an IDE burner off it seems the longer, harder, more expensive, and likely far more frustrating alternative then the other two.
I thought this has become common knowledge, but there's a bitmap compression format called DjVu invented at the AT&T Labs in 1998 which has significant advantages over the currently popular formats (JPEG, PDF, etc.).
Darling, there are literally hundreds of alternative image compression routines. Even discounting the really oddball ones there are still over 20 well known ones vith general appliciability (btw PDF is a file format; while it can contain objects compressed using a number of well recognized formats it isn't one itself.).
They advocate that their format is best suited for scanned documents.
Right, because DjVu attempts to differentiate an image foreground from the background and compress them differently. This is useful for situations where there is a high-contrast between a foreground and a background (assuming such can be identified), one is primarily interested in one layer over the other, and there's no problem with using an oddball format with only one implementation that has apparently been left to languish.
While these constraints aren't an issue for folks attempting to document illuminated manuscripts and other like materials they are very much a problem for folks on the World Wide Web. Unless you're going to insist on sending hapless browsers to an English-only website for an obscure plugin that few servers even have MIME-mapping for anyway, insist they install this plugin to their browser & OS assuming they're even supported (oh wait - the website is now dead!) then come back to browse a website, well good luck.
In the meantime the rest of us will lumber along using more general-applicability formats already widely supported by tools and browsers such as GIF, JPEG, increasingly PNG and somewhat TIFF. Let us know when you read another technology-of-the-future article from '98 though! Hey, check out IFF, another where-is-it-now (for good reason.)
As the original subject (JEPG - a revolution!) is pretty much useless this at least is more interesting:
More interesting, IMHO, is the fact that Photoshop is out for MacOS X. I'll be interested in what effect this has on the uptake of the OS, and whether it might ever lead to Photoshop on *NIX.
Yes, I think this will increase the uptake in MacOS X. Lots of graphics folks have been holding out for this, apparently it's a great implementation and will indeed likely drive much of their marketplace (just think of all of the plug-ins that will need to be upgraded.) The spillover should be a shot in the arm for the whole Mac software market and increase pressure on everyone to make the switch.
As to this increasing the odds of Photoshop on any other Unix - I doubt it. The MacOS X port is to the proprietary backwards-compatible-with-MacOS "Carbon" layer and not writing to the BSD side of things. Thus it's really the old MacOS Photoshop rewarmed and running mostly on a cleaned-up set of APIs. The other changes that have been made are apparently mostly for interaction with the Quartz graphics layer and Aqua UI, again Apple-proprietary.
The next-gen evolution will likely be to MacOS X's Cocoa layer, yet again Apple proprietary. Thus unless someone ports Apple's Carbon library to another Unix or Apple decides to make Cocoa cross-platform along with support for a differing rendering layer we're unlikely to see any of this having any relevance to other Unix's. Of course they can all now talk seamlessly to Photoshop through scripting so they're not entirely out in the cold.
since as far as i know there is only a compability layer to make the IE work with the Mac instead of a truly MAC - Designed IE. to summarize - just patchwork to make it run...
Win IE & Mac IE have completely different codebases. If there's overlap it is only in snippets of code shared between the development teams.
Aside from knowing the product history this is easily demonstrated by looking at the errata for each browser. They have very different feature sets / CSS implementations / rendering issues / etc.
Win IE 5.x is a "Carbon" application; this means it is running using a set of libraries based on the old MacOS. However it is not running in the old MacOS itself (a "Classic" application). Indeed in spite of being a Carbon application the IE 5.x for MacOS X cannot run on MacOS (though there are IE 5.x for MacOS.)
This is in line with MS Office v.X which hasn't been code-synched with it's Wintel cousin for years, is also Carbon-based, and also does not run on MacOS.
So, in point of fact, you've got every one of yours wrong.
Mac IE is not a port of Win IE, is not running in an emulation layer, and has no excuse not to be faster.
On the other hand Mac IE is more standards-compliant overall then it's Wintel cousin in spite of some glaring CSS deficiencies & other asst'd bugs. It has a notably better design in some areas, incorporates some nice features like the left-hand bar, and a much better cache (as in not-broken.)
Of course Win IE has it's own set of bugs and deficiencies so overall they're about equal with the Mac IE being somewhat more "right" & the Win IE getting more support from sites.
For the future I expect that Carbon applications like Mac IE will be eventually replaced (or superseded.) Though they've been pushed farther then Apple originally wanted (gotten more features, more support, etc.) they're still not as effective at taking advantage of MacOS X as Cocoa applications are. On the other hand they're a relatively easy port and work nearly as well so they're the obvious step for developers with large code bases and little familiarity with Objective-C & Apple's Next-derived OO development environment.
I'm a US'er living in Montreal Canada. I work often in the US, have family & friends there, etc. So this looks like a great idea esp. as the sweetie & I only have cellphones and there are no really good cell-plans from Canada to the US.
So my thinking is to go in on one of these, register myself as living in Boston with family, plug the thing in up here in Montreal and hey I've got a home phone with cheap "local" rates!
'cept they don't even list Quebec in their calling rates. They've got listings for the rest of Canada (though some of the names are wrong) but Quebec - nope. 25% of this nation's population is skipped over.
Furthermore what checks are there to assure I am where the vendor wants me to be? I'm more then happy to appear as being in the US & take my calls here in Canadia but surely there's some tarrif problem with this.
Anyone got any insight into the details on these questions? What is the deal with Quebec (can't be language as everything in Canada is required to be bilingual)? Will they be satisfied with a US billing address & credit card or need I worry about getting cut off someday?
Gee, albums by the Rolling Stones, Michael Jackson, the Eagles aren't gonna sell well? In their day each could've recorded themselves gargling and racked up the numbers. That the album was going to do well was no surprise to anyone, likely your store had already ordered a few cases on that assumption too.
I, with my amazing market insight, predict that the next Barbra Streisand, Garth Brooks, Britney Spears, Barenaked Ladies and re-re-re-release of the Beetles will do well. Doubt me? Heck I bet Amazon already has a tens of thousands for each pre-sold if they've been announced.
However sometimes even the companies screw up. Hootie & the Blowfish tanked bigtime. And how much did they blow on Mariah Carey's latest contract only to buy it out to dump her (for another 28 million!)? Bet those albums shipped with stickers too. Check out this year in review for other big miscalcs.
Besides which - you believed those stickers meant something? Guess what - I've got one right here that sez you have to empty out your bank-account and send it to me ASAP. It's right here on a 3" circle of gold glitter and black text.
Tearing them down is not the answer. It'll just come back tomorrow posted by another fool. It is far better to tear off or deface 1/2 of the ad and leave the rest. This defeats the ad and serves as warning to the next spammer to come by this is not a good location.
Use the right tools. A utility knife is excellent for these. Wire cutters are perfect for snipping through their ties. Duct-taping a utility knife to a pole is perfect for slicing those high-up signs in half.
Try and catch the spammers in the act. If you see them photograph them. Get pictures of them posting signs. Get their license plates. Get their faces. Call the cops and tell them what you're doing & where you are. Also call your local paper or radio station and tell them you've got some of these folks in front of you, would they like the story?
Removing signs is not illegal, defacing them can be. Yes weird as it may be cops don't like it when you simply compound the problem, in effect you're putting up another illegal sign. Some cops will harass you, others will run you off, be wise and don't get caught.
Get you local AG to pursue these folks. Yes it isn't a high-priority crime and there are always more dupes but it isn't all that hard to follow the money trail, shut down these vermin, there is a quality of life issue here.
Or mebbe there's just not enough market to support what you want. Niche product gets niche product resources including airplay, marketing, & distribution.
The US/Canada music industry is a big place, there are lots of players. There are the big 5 sure, but lots of smaller outfits jostling for places too. However aside from their anticompetitive behavior is the sample fact that lots of folks DO like what is played on the radio etc. They support very expensive big radio stations with it. They buy Wal-Mart's full of music.
Now, I'm lucky that for the past 8 years I've been living in two cities with great diversified radio markets, Boston & Montreal, but guess what? Folks listen to the big boys, not the stations & programs playing the non-mainstream stuff. They actually LIKE the chain radio! Lowest-common denominator sells - at a profit! It is true in radio, it is true in TV, it is true in film, it is true in consumer goods, it is true in food, it is true in furnishings, it is true in books, it is true in electronics, it is true in web sites, etc. Heck I get it in 2 languages and it is still prevalent.
Wrap your brain around that: Lots of folks like commercial radio. When given the opportunity to choose alternatives they choose the mainstream stuff. Stop, grab a chair, sit down, let this pardyme shift bubble through your cerebellum: Pop Culture *Is* Because Folks Like It.
Whew - revelatory huh?
It's not some evil cabal of music oligarchs dictating to a captive audience but a bunch of savvy marketers pandering to the public in a mostly capitalistic market. Oh sure there's syndicates & you-scratch-my-back/I'll-scratch-yours etc. but they don't own the whole game, there are still independents, just MOST FOLKS DON'T CARE.
They WANT Top-10, they LIKE Britney or Whitney or AM Gold or whatever, they buy it and support the whole edifice. Sure artists don't get paid as much as they could under other companies, on the other hand these big companies get them attention and distribution and airplay and for all of everyone bleating "it's about the art" or "it's the artists" the marketers and the paper pushers and the schmoozers and all of the other big-5 trappings are just as crucial in becoming a big hit.
Want to be big go for the big 5 and take yer chances. Wanna go the hard route then try the independents and see if you manage to win big there. But don't go crying theft when the big 5 provide a demonstratable service, deliver the goods. And don't be suprised when they take a pass on acts that don't fit in their product lines, don't have the volume to justify their investment.
So yeah, if if your particular tastes aren't mass-market then you won't find them in heavy rotation in a mass medium like radio. You also won't find supermarkets carrying exotic & obscure foods or suburban malls offering unique goods. What part of this don't you get?
With modern graphics and 3D sound processing, I'll bet it wouldn't be too hard to add at least some of the sensory experience.
How to get the floor to "thrum" as the disk pack spins up, that cold dry flavorless air inside the machine room, the detritus of paper lint & chads in the corners, and the perfume of an outgassing VT-100 mixing with some visitor's day-old "Jovan Musk" cologne...
Or in my case the ubiquitious CCC "Grape Cake". Take a day-old pound cake bought at the Star Merket in Central Square, get a bottle of Grape Jelly, slice said pound cake in half and apply as much grape jelly as won't run out. For the ambitious the cake can be sliced into several layers. Share with a room full of hungry geeks at 4am and enjoy the always slightly-tacky keyboard afterwards...
Maybe if the RIAA would price their CDs more reasonably, actually give money to their artists, and stop the overwhelming and unnecessary homogenization of the music which they promote to (read: push on) the public, people wouldn't be so inclined to download music.
Oh get over yourself.
People buy what they want and self-styled cognoscenti always consider it crap. Guess what: most of us wouldn't give two bits for whatever drivel you've got in your music library.
As to how the music companies pay their staff - that's their model, you might as well whine about how car manufacturers are structured financially or yam importers. If it didn't work they'd be OUT OF BUSINESS but they're not.
Yes they're trying to twist laws to their own ends, but that is an entirely separate issue then the others. If you don't like the big labels don't patronize them but don't go whining about Britney Spears.
Guess what: There's ALWAYS some whiner going on about pop culture yada yada yada. You only look like a self-aggrandizing poseur when you take the "if they only listed to *my* obscure taste-du-jour..." line.
Now back to my collection of gay male choral recordings; there's this fine one from the BGMC...
Impressive - but how does it compare?
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PVR For Linux
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· Score: 2, Insightful
Sure this is a really kewl thing to pull off. On the other hand how big is it's market?
Anyone know of a bake-off between one of these and a TiVo or a Replay?
Slashdot Mirror
I'm not defending MS, and I don't know anything more about the Softimage IP issue the dinner party conversation, but in this case it sounds as if the problem was at Softimge and not higher.
You can make the argument that reponsability rests at the top be it ownership or chain of command or whatever but personally I tend to assign it to the folks who make the decisions. I'm told this was done in this case in Montreal not Redmond.
YMMV, and as I said this is just dinner party chit-chat to me.
MS's involvement in this was pretty minimal. They bought Softimage, there was no, shall we say "meeting of the minds" and they soon gave up and sold 'em off. Any IP violations were pretty much Softimage-responsability and not their corporate masters du jure.
Of course Softimage is notable for being, as far as I know, the only shop that was ever bought up by MS that then succesfully fought it's way free.
- Aqua depends on the Quartz rendering layer (Display PDF)
- Apple developed Quartz (Display PDF) in-house specifically in order to avoid paying licensing fees to Adobe like Next was for Display postscript
- The PDF spec is open for anyone else to develop their own implementation, just like Apple did
- Apple's implementation of Display PDF is apparently fairly MacOS X-specific and while chunks of it could likely be retargetted it's supposedly not a candidate for a direct port
- Apple considers the Aqua GUI their trade dress and are quite vigorous about defending it
So, instead of whining at Apple to give away their goodies how about actually supporting the projects out there with the same aims? And instead of looking to rip-off their interface howzabout showing some initiative and coming up with a distinct sperate one - goodness knows there's enough folks happy to criticize the Aqua GUI.When did Open Source become gimme gimme gimme?
Check out The Physician's Computer Company . They've been around 18 years, run on Red Hat (they handle it all for you), specialize in smallish offices like yours, having met some of the staff socially they're folks I'd like to do business with.
- You can get a reasonable deal from a Dell or IBM for 50 PCs. This includes putting your own image on the drive, support, a decent salesdroid who will likely help with any issues down the road, a sturdy warrenty to back your purchase up, lotsa help in the drivers & spares market, etc.
- You can get 50 PCs assembled at ye local screwdriver shoppe for about what it would cost you to build-your-own but insofar as support & such you are own your own (unless it is some gross defect they can return to the manufacturer.)
- Or you can do it all in house and assume you've got the time to do it all, keep up with everything, and of course document it all in case of a proverbial bus hitting you.
My own argument would be if the business is a real business it should invest in its tools that are a critical part of it's operation. If this eats into the other budgets tough - employees need a roof, lighting, and decent computers. Trying to nickel & dime on hardware is foolish because you invariably end up with a herd of increasingly quirky systems slowly becoming Frankensteined. Unless the tech support (you) is free they're going to end up spending any savings in your time as well as the downtime of the aging & rebuilt systems plus the increasingly irate rest of the staff.Put this all on paper, generate some good estimates of costs & time allowences, failure rates & resolution times then present it to the CFO. Even for a company in a cash crunch these are generally compelling arguments that are well understood by the numbers folks.
They they don't bite then ask yourself if you want to hang around babysitting these monstrosities as the rest of the world moves on?
- Reverse-commute on the Logan Express bus from the airport out to a short distance from the cinema. Indeed before the trees leaf out you can see the two buildings from each other; later just ask directions from the station staff, it's a trivial 5 minute walk. To catch Logan Express go to the lower level of the Airport and watch for a large red coach-style bus, the one you'll want is the hourly Framingham one.
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Take the Commuter Rail out to Framingham station. There are buses that connect from there around Framingham but I've never seen a good map or schedule of them, Google or ask on ne.transportaion for current status. Personally I'd just catch a cab over.
- Look into getting a ZipCar or just convincing a friend to drive you out. The cinema is a hop-skip-&-jump from the Framingham exit on the Mass Pike. Offering tickets & popcorn is good incentive.
Finally, contrary to some reports the digital projection isn't in the Premium Theater - that's standard 35mm insofar as I know. Instead I recall the large #9 screen is the one with the digital projection and special audio equipment. While the Premium screen does seem to get the freshest prints and often have the best focus & other projection niceties it appears to be just a well executed traditional film theater sans children & mystery stuff sticking to the seats & floors.- Apple just introduced their new iMac a few months ago. It's gotten great reviews everywhere from the New York Times to BusinessWeek to most every major local daily and geek publication.
- Apple isn't going to confuse the market with an iMac that hearkens back to the older design iMac (which they still sell BTW!)
- However the Education market is a big one for Apple and one they've recently been taking a beating in (in spite of a few big wins.) The last education-specific-product they had was the ill-starred eMate (Netwon-based indestructo-laptop) that burnt their customers when it was suddenly dropped.
- Folks have been whining at Apple for a 17" iMac for forever. However Apple made it clear they couldn't do it in the iMac formfactor. Well, this is pretty close but yeah, not the same.
- So here they've solved two problems with one stone, er, Mac. They've satisfied the Edu market with a cheapie low-maint iMac that has scaled up to the 17" world. They've also managed to satisfy that market without detracting from their can't-ship-them-fast-enough new iMac design.
- Will this eMac move into the Consumer market? Probably not as such. Right now the service, support, marketing etc. for this model is nicely contained in the Edu division of Apple and likely to stay there for a while.
- On the other hand businesses have really taken a shine to a iMac line. This is a bit of a quandary for Apple as they'd far prefer their G-series of Macs be the corporate model.
- The eMac might lead the way to a compromise: Here's a cheapie iMac-alike that could be a great client packaged with a MacOS X Server. This could get Apple into the 1,000-cheap-standardized-ruggedized-identical-bui
l t-to-be-centrally-managed desktop model that they've been completely absent from.
- However this would somewhat expand Apple's product line which is something they're leery of after the excesses of the late 80's-90's.
- Right now Apple's product line-up is Consumer with iMac & iBook, Professional with G4 & PowerBook. The Cube was an odd duck to this - a cross between the iMac & G4. However this is almost exactly what the eMac is just cheaper and in a different formfactor.
- So eMac = Cube v.2?
- This is my guess. Not only did Apple listen to what Edus wanted from an iMac but they also learned what didn't work with the Cube. Now they've merged them and I wouldn't be surprised in a rev or two to see Apple start a big public push back onto corporate desktops.
- Just as NT was perceived as a better OS as it came in desktop & server versions (gotta have the same across the enterprise!), it was "friendlier" then Netware and the other competition (can't get nicer then Apple!) and "industrial strength" (MacOS X runs BSD for goodness sakes!) I bet Apple is getting ready for the same assault back.
- A range of hardware, expanding marketshare, an OS that runs the same stuff as "the big boys", easy to develop custom apps for, ease of use, runs MS Office; Apple could regain some serious ground.
All IMHO of course.The 17" LCD is not from the same production line and doesn't face any supply constraints. Indeed from word on the street these are pretty much "generic" 17" LCDs that can be bought from a number of manufacturers.
Either Apple has learned their lesson on single-source-components or more likely just didn't have the unusual requirements that led to their use in the latest iMacs.
Whatever the case it's clear ("blazingly obvious" in your parlance) that the two cases are not related. Nice try though; pity you didn't think it through first. "LCD parts" is useless as a category when describing different product lines.
You:
- Immediately post demanding to know what this is all about, somebody explain it to you, blah blah blah.
- Follow the links included, invest 60 seconds figuring out the topic, then post your findings as a service to others.
Which did you do? What does that make you?Dismissed.
Or perhaps we should chew your food for you and wipe your ass too?
Don't bother to respond; someone as clueless or self-indulgent as you is very unlikely to have anything useful or interesting to contribute here.
This is not a troll, it is a perfectly reasonable response to a perfectly useless posting. "dangermouse" could have invested the ame effort into getting an answer as they did whining about not knowing and for somebody to puhlease spoonfeed them.
This is the original iMac: Bondi Blue, 233 MHz, 2MB Rage+ video, mezzanine slot that was never used, really evil origami-style assembly.
To run MacOS X on this is, well, it's doable but it is painful. I bought MacOS X for my rev. B (same but with 6 MB video RAM) and finally scrubbed it off as too slow to be practical on this 4 year old hardware. Apparently you're a more patient person then I.
You're going to have to run the IDE cable off of the same bus the existing hard drive is on, chop a hole in the case to feed it out. Then you're going to have to find a compatible burner, trick it out it in a case of some sort (nekked electronics often come to bad ends) as well as that power supply. Now comes the problem of getting everything recognized...
My advice would be forget creating a Frankenstein-machine and move up to a machine that comes with it. Or go USB.
- Apple is still selling the CRT iMacs at a good price. You can find older models for sale in lots of places online, particularly as kids who got them as they entered college graduate. With selling your existing model the cost of an iMac with native burning would almost certainly be less then cutting open your current one and hanging a lot of hardware off of it.
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Or were you for some reason bound & determined not to replace your current iMac (all of your accessories match or something) then a USB burner would seem to be a good alternative. They're fairly well supported, if you get a USB 1.1/USB 2 one you'll be set for the future, a USB/FireWire and you'll be golden. Thus when you do break down and upgrade this'll be no huhu, indeed you can even lend it out to friends & family, share it between machines.
It's your call, but unless you're going for some bragging rights on iMac hardware hacking hanging an IDE burner off it seems the longer, harder, more expensive, and likely far more frustrating alternative then the other two.While these constraints aren't an issue for folks attempting to document illuminated manuscripts and other like materials they are very much a problem for folks on the World Wide Web. Unless you're going to insist on sending hapless browsers to an English-only website for an obscure plugin that few servers even have MIME-mapping for anyway, insist they install this plugin to their browser & OS assuming they're even supported ( oh wait - the website is now dead! ) then come back to browse a website, well good luck.
In the meantime the rest of us will lumber along using more general-applicability formats already widely supported by tools and browsers such as GIF, JPEG, increasingly PNG and somewhat TIFF. Let us know when you read another technology-of-the-future article from '98 though! Hey, check out IFF, another where-is-it-now (for good reason.)
As to this increasing the odds of Photoshop on any other Unix - I doubt it. The MacOS X port is to the proprietary backwards-compatible-with-MacOS "Carbon" layer and not writing to the BSD side of things. Thus it's really the old MacOS Photoshop rewarmed and running mostly on a cleaned-up set of APIs. The other changes that have been made are apparently mostly for interaction with the Quartz graphics layer and Aqua UI, again Apple-proprietary.
The next-gen evolution will likely be to MacOS X's Cocoa layer, yet again Apple proprietary. Thus unless someone ports Apple's Carbon library to another Unix or Apple decides to make Cocoa cross-platform along with support for a differing rendering layer we're unlikely to see any of this having any relevance to other Unix's. Of course they can all now talk seamlessly to Photoshop through scripting so they're not entirely out in the cold.
- Win IE & Mac IE have completely different codebases. If there's overlap it is only in snippets of code shared between the development teams.
- Aside from knowing the product history this is easily demonstrated by looking at the errata for each browser. They have very different feature sets / CSS implementations / rendering issues / etc.
- Win IE 5.x is a "Carbon" application; this means it is running using a set of libraries based on the old MacOS. However it is not running in the old MacOS itself (a "Classic" application). Indeed in spite of being a Carbon application the IE 5.x for MacOS X cannot run on MacOS (though there are IE 5.x for MacOS.)
- This is in line with MS Office v.X which hasn't been code-synched with it's Wintel cousin for years, is also Carbon-based, and also does not run on MacOS.
- So, in point of fact, you've got every one of yours wrong.
Mac IE is not a port of Win IE, is not running in an emulation layer, and has no excuse not to be faster.On the other hand Mac IE is more standards-compliant overall then it's Wintel cousin in spite of some glaring CSS deficiencies & other asst'd bugs. It has a notably better design in some areas, incorporates some nice features like the left-hand bar, and a much better cache (as in not-broken.)
Of course Win IE has it's own set of bugs and deficiencies so overall they're about equal with the Mac IE being somewhat more "right" & the Win IE getting more support from sites.
For the future I expect that Carbon applications like Mac IE will be eventually replaced (or superseded.) Though they've been pushed farther then Apple originally wanted (gotten more features, more support, etc.) they're still not as effective at taking advantage of MacOS X as Cocoa applications are. On the other hand they're a relatively easy port and work nearly as well so they're the obvious step for developers with large code bases and little familiarity with Objective-C & Apple's Next-derived OO development environment.
So my thinking is to go in on one of these, register myself as living in Boston with family, plug the thing in up here in Montreal and hey I've got a home phone with cheap "local" rates!
'cept they don't even list Quebec in their calling rates. They've got listings for the rest of Canada (though some of the names are wrong) but Quebec - nope. 25% of this nation's population is skipped over.
Furthermore what checks are there to assure I am where the vendor wants me to be? I'm more then happy to appear as being in the US & take my calls here in Canadia but surely there's some tarrif problem with this.
Anyone got any insight into the details on these questions? What is the deal with Quebec (can't be language as everything in Canada is required to be bilingual)? Will they be satisfied with a US billing address & credit card or need I worry about getting cut off someday?
I, with my amazing market insight, predict that the next Barbra Streisand, Garth Brooks, Britney Spears, Barenaked Ladies and re-re-re-release of the Beetles will do well. Doubt me? Heck I bet Amazon already has a tens of thousands for each pre-sold if they've been announced.
However sometimes even the companies screw up. Hootie & the Blowfish tanked bigtime. And how much did they blow on Mariah Carey's latest contract only to buy it out to dump her (for another 28 million!)? Bet those albums shipped with stickers too. Check out this year in review for other big miscalcs.
Besides which - you believed those stickers meant something? Guess what - I've got one right here that sez you have to empty out your bank-account and send it to me ASAP. It's right here on a 3" circle of gold glitter and black text.
Goober.
Oh, and your argument that stealing niche music is the answer, yeah, that'll grow the market...
The US/Canada music industry is a big place, there are lots of players. There are the big 5 sure, but lots of smaller outfits jostling for places too. However aside from their anticompetitive behavior is the sample fact that lots of folks DO like what is played on the radio etc. They support very expensive big radio stations with it. They buy Wal-Mart's full of music.
Now, I'm lucky that for the past 8 years I've been living in two cities with great diversified radio markets, Boston & Montreal, but guess what? Folks listen to the big boys, not the stations & programs playing the non-mainstream stuff. They actually LIKE the chain radio! Lowest-common denominator sells - at a profit! It is true in radio, it is true in TV, it is true in film, it is true in consumer goods, it is true in food, it is true in furnishings, it is true in books, it is true in electronics, it is true in web sites, etc. Heck I get it in 2 languages and it is still prevalent.
Wrap your brain around that: Lots of folks like commercial radio. When given the opportunity to choose alternatives they choose the mainstream stuff. Stop, grab a chair, sit down, let this pardyme shift bubble through your cerebellum: Pop Culture *Is* Because Folks Like It.
Whew - revelatory huh?
It's not some evil cabal of music oligarchs dictating to a captive audience but a bunch of savvy marketers pandering to the public in a mostly capitalistic market. Oh sure there's syndicates & you-scratch-my-back/I'll-scratch-yours etc. but they don't own the whole game, there are still independents, just MOST FOLKS DON'T CARE.
They WANT Top-10, they LIKE Britney or Whitney or AM Gold or whatever, they buy it and support the whole edifice. Sure artists don't get paid as much as they could under other companies, on the other hand these big companies get them attention and distribution and airplay and for all of everyone bleating "it's about the art" or "it's the artists" the marketers and the paper pushers and the schmoozers and all of the other big-5 trappings are just as crucial in becoming a big hit.
Want to be big go for the big 5 and take yer chances. Wanna go the hard route then try the independents and see if you manage to win big there. But don't go crying theft when the big 5 provide a demonstratable service, deliver the goods. And don't be suprised when they take a pass on acts that don't fit in their product lines, don't have the volume to justify their investment.
So yeah, if if your particular tastes aren't mass-market then you won't find them in heavy rotation in a mass medium like radio. You also won't find supermarkets carrying exotic & obscure foods or suburban malls offering unique goods. What part of this don't you get?
Or in my case the ubiquitious CCC "Grape Cake". Take a day-old pound cake bought at the Star Merket in Central Square, get a bottle of Grape Jelly, slice said pound cake in half and apply as much grape jelly as won't run out. For the ambitious the cake can be sliced into several layers. Share with a room full of hungry geeks at 4am and enjoy the always slightly-tacky keyboard afterwards...
Some things just can't be simulated.
People buy what they want and self-styled cognoscenti always consider it crap. Guess what: most of us wouldn't give two bits for whatever drivel you've got in your music library.
As to how the music companies pay their staff - that's their model, you might as well whine about how car manufacturers are structured financially or yam importers. If it didn't work they'd be OUT OF BUSINESS but they're not.
Yes they're trying to twist laws to their own ends, but that is an entirely separate issue then the others. If you don't like the big labels don't patronize them but don't go whining about Britney Spears.
Guess what: There's ALWAYS some whiner going on about pop culture yada yada yada. You only look like a self-aggrandizing poseur when you take the "if they only listed to *my* obscure taste-du-jour..." line.
Now back to my collection of gay male choral recordings; there's this fine one from the BGMC...
Anyone know of a bake-off between one of these and a TiVo or a Replay?
Image quality, integration, "intelligence", listings, UI, ease-of-use, remote-control support, etc?
Frankly I want a no-brainer to handle my TV recording; not to have to put together a perl script just to record "Naked Chef".